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Rescuing Children from “Gay” Adoption

Earlier this week, in a post entitled “Fatal Attractions,” I recommended One Man, One Woman: A Catholic’s Guide to Defending Marriage by Dale O’Leary. She masterfully exposes common myths surrounding homosexuality, including the falsehoods that people are “born that way” and that “ten percent” of the population is homosexual. Since O’Leary is, after all, a family rights advocate, she spends much time on the negative effects of “gay adoption” and the myth that children raised in such an environment are “just like any other children.”

In order to give you a taste of O’Leary’s writing on this subject, here is an excerpt from the book, taken from pp. 233-34:

Doesn’t Everyone Have a Right to Children?

Persons with SSA [same-sex attraction] are human beings. It’s natural for them to want to experience the joy of having children: to love, to nurture, to leave a legacy. There’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to become pregnant and bear a child, or a man wanting to experience the joy of seeing his son grow into manhood or his daughter develop into a beautiful woman.

But children are not trophies, or a way to meet one’s personal needs, or props to help forward an ideology. People aren’t a means to an end; they’re meant to be loved for their own sake. Therefore, no one has a “right” to a child. It’s children who have the rights. When circumstances separate a child from one or both biological parents, adults should try to create a situation for him that is as normal as possible. No matter how honorable the intention, no one has the right to compound the tragedy of separation from biological parents by subjecting a child to another suboptimal situation.

Activists might claim that couples with SSA are “rescuing” children by adopting them out of poverty or other hard circumstances. Although laudable, this intent doesn’t negate the real problems caused by same-sex parenting–problems deeper and longer lasting than material deprivation. This argument also loses force when you consider the many roadblocks to adoption faced by stable, well-to-do married couples. Same-sex adoption doesn’t provide more homes for needy children; it just keeps those children away from married couples who would otherwise adopt them.

Of course, when AID [artificial insemination by donor] and surrogacy are used to create babies for same-sex couples, these children aren’t being “rescued” from anything. Instead, they’re being intentionally conceived to be placed in suboptimal situations. This is child abuse.

As more persons with SSA acquire children, society will increasingly be pressured to ignore the problems caused by same-sex parenting–just as it ignores the problems caused by divorce–and join in the pretense that having two mommies is just the same as having a mommy and a daddy. But no matter how many people praise “family diversity,” children being raised by parents with SSA will always know that it’s not the same, and someday they will resent how their needs have been sacrificed for the sake of a social experiment. . . .